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Qualia from physical systems
Here I'll try to say more about how I think qualia arises (or whatever) from physical stuff. My other page, Whence Philosophical Zombies, isn't really for that. I'll probably stick to visual qualia in my examples. For my responses to (specific?) anti-materialists and whatnot, see my page here. Addressing what people call the "hard problem" of consciousness. For anyone at all (whether physicalist or idealist or even dualist) you will have to bridge that gap: # what is the relationship between what we experience and our physical models? # why are our experiences the way they are, rather than some other way? The fact is, experience is composed of states (such as the state of seeing red VS seeing blue), and perhaps processes. And physicalism is all about physical states and processes. All that's needed is for an experienced state to be identical to a physical state, or something like that. And this is essentially the solution to the "hard problem" I think, making it not ""hard"" (in the intended sense) anymore. The "but that's just correlation" reply: "You still have no way to bridge the gap between the properties of elementary particles, charge spin etc., to the feeling of love or perception of red. ... Even if particles in the brain perfectly mirror the mental, you have discovered a correlation and moved no closer to solving the hard problem." My response: No, I'm not saying correlation. I'm saying identity. They are literally identical. Describing one fully (in detail, for example, the details of what we actually mean by "love" or experiencing red), just by the meaning of the words, gives you a complete description of the other. Which people will be able to confirm for themselves. ***You wouldn't even be able to tell "which one" was being described anymore, it would be entirely accurate for both***. That's why it removes the "hardness" from the hard problem: we just have to look and find those states and processes (which is "the easy problem", not the "hard" problem). No one else (not dualists, not panpsychists, not epiphenominalists, not idealists) have any more plausible solution. Specifying what will be experienced, and then experiencing it These seem to be two different questions, so I'll look at each of them separately: 'Specification' It seems pretty clear how to specify certain information. For visual phenomenon, just have to specify (for each location/"pixel" in the visual feild) three things: hue, saturation, and luminosity. It's easy to imagine how something like a three-dimensional structure (a 3d "color map" structure) in the brain could have dimensions corrosponding to the three dimensions (hue, saturation, and luminosity) of a visual pixel. And then, to specify which color is in a certain pixel, a bond is made between the pixel and the location in the color map structure. The two are then connected. Experience So, if this can seem easy to "specify" in some sense, how then is that made into an "experience"? We have to be able to directly "know" that each pixel of the visual feild "is" currently a particular color. Immediately, without further analysis. And all of those 3 dimensions of color seem to be one single thing (like the connection, on my model, is hypothesized to be one single thing?), not three separate peices of information. It's quite possible that this "knowing" (of some kind) is all there is to "experience". And it's possible that this "knowing" is simply the fact that this specified information is being supplied to other parts/processes of the brain. Like the part that processes the recognition of objects. The part that processes aesthetic enjoyment (our favorite or least favorite colors). And, of course, the language center to say what color we see. 'And so on' From there, those parts specify their own items of interest, and output them further. The object recognized is a broken vase: so what does this mean? The word for vase is known, can we make a pun or a rhyme with it? See also * Richard Carrier's writings, such as his "Theory of Mind" section here, and his blog post "The Mind Is a Process Not an Object"